Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from Winslow Warren, 6 April 1781

From Winslow Warren9

ALS: American Philosophical Society

Amsterdam 6th: April 1781

sir

I was yesterday informed by my Friend at Ostende,1 a Trunk & a Box, belonging to me, Were by Mistake sent to you at Passy— I must request your Excellency’s Care of them for the present— & have the Honour to be With the most perfect respect, yr Ex. Most Obedt: Very Hum: servt:

W Warren

Excellency Benja: Franklin

Addressed: His Excellency Benja: Franklin / Minister Plenipotentiary / from the United states / of America / Passy

Notation: W. Warren 6 Apr 1781

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

9The son of James and Mercy Otis Warren, he had been captured while traveling to France and carried to Newfoundland. He was taken to England on the same ship as Henry Laurens, but not imprisoned. During the investigation of Americans following the news of Maj. André’s execution he had helped John Trumbull’s friend Maj. John Steele Tyler elude capture: XXXIII, 363n; Adams Papers, IX, 289n; X, 356n, 445. Warren himself was detained briefly just before he sailed to the Netherlands: Elias and Finch, Letters of Digges, pp. 349–50; Rosemarie Zagarri, A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill., 1995), pp. 110–12.

1Probably Tyler, who had fled there: from Digges, Nov. 21.

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